Help Your Kids Take Care of Their Eyes

As a parent, one of your most important jobs is not just to take care of your child’s health but to teach them how to take care of themselves. If your family or your spouse’s is prone to vision trouble, you’ll want to teach your kids how to take good care of their eyesight and help them maintain their vision well. Follow these tips to help protect your little one’s eyes.

Monitor Food and Water

You shouldn’t be surprised to hear that the food you give your children can have a significant effect on their vision, just like so many areas of their overall health. You can encourage your children to try healthy foods and give them a mixed diet full of vitamins and minerals. Vitamin A is one to pay attention to for vision health, which you can boost with leafy green and yellow veggies. 

Water is also helpful for good vision, especially the eye’s built-in cleaning processes. Your pediatrician can help you determine how much water your little one needs, but an average child should have at least four glasses of water a day. Daily healthy habits can have a monumental impact on individual aspects of your kids’ wellbeing, and vision is no different.

Dress With Eye Protection

No matter how perfect or faulty your child’s vision is, teach them to protect their eyes from the sun or other bright lights like screens. Set a good example yourself by wearing sunglasses and hats when outside, and encourage them to copy you. Limit screen time and explain to them how it can damage their eyes while providing alternate ways they can entertain themselves. 

If your child wears glasses or contacts, teach them to be careful with their lenses and wear them at the right times. If more than one child has glasses, or they have friends with glasses, make sure they each keep the ones prescribed to them and don’t trade around. When your child plays sports or other high-contact games, suggest that they remove their glasses or get prescription goggles so that the lenses don’t break.

Teach Eye Safety

You might think it’d be intuitive, but most children need a reminder to keep things out of their eyes and to avoid getting anything in each other’s eyes. Discourage them from throwing sand or gravel in each other’s faces, and encourage them to wear safety goggles or face protection if they help you with any tasks like lawn care or woodworking. 

Children have a particular tendency to rub their eyes if something is bothering them, which can cause problems if the irritant is a foreign substance. Encourage them to seek out adult help instead, to wash out their eyes with a non-irritating solution. You can also help them wash their hands before touching their eyes to avoid pinkeye or other infections. 

Schedule Regular Eye Exams

If you don’t bring your kids in, you may never know that a problem exists. While many states require an eye exam before starting school, children sometimes slip through the cracks and have to try to accomplish their work with imperfect eyes. If your child complains that they can’t see the teacher’s writing on the board or avoids reading and writing, an eye exam may be the first step to improve their school experience. 

If you need a reliable care center for your child’s vision and dental health, look to Youth Dental & Vision. As a locally-based practice, we pride ourselves on providing high-quality care for every child that steps through our doors at any of our four locations. Contact us today to schedule an appointment and see how Youth Dental and Vision can take care of your kids.

Categories: Vision